I was an amiable baby. My mother put me in a playpen to get things done-- she was always starting big projects she seldom finished-- leading my Southern grandma to wryly drawl," Honey, if that child didn't cry once in a while, she would never get picked up."
My daughter and I were alike as toddlers. We were both the type of children who could find a bobby pin on the floor, wrap it with toilet paper, call it a baby doll and croon to it for hours. Maybe it's because we were both second children, but we didn't need to be constantly entertained. We could do that just fine for ourselves, and it made us grow into independent souls.
I know my mother had the same heart-felt dreams for me as I do now for my own children, and that she made the same kind of mistakes. She was just a regular person who did the best she could, the same way I did. We are all just picking our way through this life, thinking we are doing the right thing but looking back with clarity and seeing that sometimes we didn't.
As a mother, I want my children to remember the sterling moments: that I played freeze-tag with them even when I was bone-tired and just wanted to sit zombie-like on the couch, that I read to them cuddling in bed every night until they were teenagers and begged me to stop, that we sat down to a home-cooked meal almost every night and never ate in front of the TV, that I quit my job at a newspaper because I couldn't bear to leave them anymore.
I want my daughter to remember that when she didn't want to get out of bed in the morning for school, I'd lie next to her in bed and rub her back and run my fingers through her hair and tell her all the things I wished we could do that day: make mud-pies, finger-paint, play dress-up all day long. I want her to remember that it was enough just to imagine all that, and then she could go to school all day with a song in her heart.
I want my son to remember that when we were biking home in the pouring rain when he was four and he started to cry, all I had to say was, "Sean, it's an ADVENTURE," and he brightened right up. Forever after, whenever anything bad happened, he would remind me, "Mom, it's an ADVENTURE!" and the bad times just became good stories to tell later.
I want them both to remember our house was always the Kool-Aid house, the house the kids flocked to from the time they were little until well in their teens. We didn't really serve Kool-Aid, but I was the mom who didn't mind the mess of Play-Doh, paints and homemade forts. I was the mom who joined right in with the games, because it made me re-live my own childhood, and I didn't want to miss a second of my kids' growing-up.
Even when we were on an outing, as soon as neighbor kids saw our car turn into the driveway, they would come running like lemmings. Once, I was alone in the house napping and opened my eyes to see the close-up faces of the little children next door peering at me. Another time, I was surprised coming out of the shower, dripping wet and naked, by a six-year-old neighbor.
But I also know that my children remember the wrong things, just like I did. They seem to recall all the times when I lost my temper and screamed like a banshee ("It was YOU!" is a well-worn private joke in our house), rather than the times when I had the patience of a saint. They liked to compare me to other mothers, such as the time when my small daughter instructed me, "You know, Mommy, when Miss Beth makes cookies, she puts sugar, flour and milk in a big bowl instead of just getting a tube out of the refrigerator." There is no one who can tap into a mother's insecurities like her child.
For some ridiculous reason, one of the abiding memories of my own childhood is when a passel of us were folding laundry on the front porch, and my mother wrinkled her nose and inquired, "Who just passed gas?" Another is when she chased me around the kitchen with a broom for a teenaged misdeed. I am sure she wishes I would have preserved better memories.
I do recall my mother always told me I was the kind of person who had the talent to do anything I set my mind to. She always bragged about me to her friends, as she did about all her other children.
I know that when she suspected I was marrying the wrong man, she spent a lot of sleepless nights. Your children are your children, no matter how old they are, and it's true that as the child grows, so do the size of the troubles.
On this day I worry about the tiny aneurysm that is lodged in the head of my beautiful girl. I worry that my son is in an unhealthy relationship that will damage his already fragile psyche beyond repair. My worries were birthed with my children. Like my mother before me, all I can do is couple those worries with love, cover them with prayers that outnumber the stars, and hope that it all doesn't come unraveled.
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